Forum:Tense change
I think that from here on out, the in-universe articles on this wiki should be written in a past tense, as if a historian living in the future of the Max Payne universe was recording the events, characters, locations, weapons and media of the three games and comic series as historical events. The exception to this change would be "out of universe" articles, such as the Sam Lake article, the game articles, etc. The game chapter articles are the only ones, in my opinion, that shouldn't adhere to the past tense change that seem to be in-universe since the majority of those articles are written in an "out of universe" style. Places like locations would be written like this: "The Asgard Building, located near the Brooklyn Bridge, was used as a meeting place for the Inner Circle during the events of the Valkyr case" instead of how I originally wrote it: "The Asgard Building is located near the Brooklyn Bridge, and it is used as a meeting place for the Inner Circle." After the extermination of several Inner Circle members followed by an assault by Horne's forces on the building, it is unknown if/unlikely to be still in use by the Inner Circle after the events of the first game. Consistency is one of the most important elements of a good wiki, and when some articles are written in the past tense while others are written in present (even some that are written in both!), it makes for a disjointed reading experience when skipping from article to article. Wookiepedia, the Star Wars wiki, is the most well-known and respected wiki on the Internet, and the editors there use past tense for their in-universe articles, so does the Star Trek, Harry Potter and 24 wikis as well, and some, like the 24 wiki, have had discussions on which tense to use for their articles, see the 24 wiki discussion here. In the end, they each decided that past tense for in-universe articles was the best way to write them, maintaining consistency throughout their wikis. One last note: one of the main reasons I do want to use past tense consistently is due to the game-spanning articles that this wiki has. What events during the past are considered past tense? Are the events of Max Payne 1 & 2 discussed with a past tense but the ones related to 3 are discussed in present tense? What about characters that have died in the third game? The 24 wiki states that the usage of past tense "creates consistency across all in-universe articles and eliminates the necessity of subjectively deciding when an unresolved loose end is no longer 'current' or 'recent.'" Overall I think this is a better policy than arbitrarily deciding which articles should be in past or present tense. I will leave this topic open for discussion for awhile, but if no one gives their opinion or objects, I will change the Manual of style to reflect the change and begin to go through the articles to change them all to be consistent in regards to tense. I'll be on here for the next three weeks nearly every day, so I'll try to be quick in response or open to discuss the tense change. Thanks, Maxheat7 (talk) 02:02, December 14, 2016 (UTC) Jan. 28, 2017 EDIT: Since no one responded to this post in the 40+ days since I created it, I will assume that no one read it or is willing to disagree with the tense change. I will change the tense guideline page and continue to edit in-universe articles to change them to past tense. Readers and other posters are always welcome to later add to this post to ask questions or even debate the tense change. Maxheat7 (talk) 10:39, January 28, 2017 (UTC)